The City of Weyburn will be conducting unidirectional flushing beginning on Monday, September 18th.

Jennifer Wilkinson, Director of Engineering for the City of Weyburn, said it's a cost-effective maintenance procedure that provides them with some insights.

"Basically we are flushing out our water mains and we do it in a very mathematical approach in how we direct the water to kind of get the best flow through the piping to ensure that we can clean out any residuals that might remain in there," she explained. "It is very cost-effective, as well as it wastes less water than typical processes." 

She said the process will continue for approximately two weeks, between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., moving through the city in most neighbourhoods.

"During that time you shouldn't see any disruption to your water service," Wilkinson noted. "The only thing that you could potentially see is you might see a bit of murky water. If that does happen, you need to run your cold tap for about 15 minutes just because that means they probably are flushing in your area. But there is going to be no safety concerns with the water. It just may be that you have a bit of murky water." 

This activity means some may notice the use of fire hydrants and excess water on the streets - something that hasn't been seen in a while.

"This one is a little different than that traditional method. We've been doing unidirectional flushing for a few years now. We usually do it annually, but we did halt the program when we were having some drought issues within the city for a couple of years, and now we've brought it back again this year," she explained. "You will see them working with the fire hydrants, but we don't just open the fire hydrants anymore. We do it in a much more controlled manner, because we do actually take this modeling as well, and use the data after, and also detect anywhere that we need to repair a water main or do some additional maintenance."

Wilkinson said this kind of data helps them pinpoint any kind of maintenance or capital projects they may need to do in future years on different areas in the city. 

"Water mains are a little tougher. On a lot of these situations it will tell us where we need to maybe replace a valve or if we do have an issue with a fire hydrant, it'll identify that," she added. "Water mains are typically calculated on a break basis, because there is not maybe the proven technology on water mains, but we will see it a lot with our valves and our hydrants, and this will help dictate our programs going forward." 

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